Getting to Ao Nang

The bus journey from Bangkok was fine, and we got to the connection hub of Surat Thani early in the morning, waited for about an hour and then continued on towards Krabi. But it turned out that the bus stopped at a tour office about 5km before Krabi town itself, and everyone had to get out. This is a very common scam here in Thailand, where you buy a cheap bus ticket to a destination only to be hit by extra charges or left miles from where you're supposed to be going.

Myself and another traveller got quite irrate with the girls working at the tour office, trying to insist that they pay for the waiting taxis to drop us into Krabi town proper. Of course they completely refused, so in an attempt to work out exactly where I was I grabbed a local map from in front of them (all the other travellers on our bus just seemed to accept being ripped off, and quitely paid the extra 'charge' for taxis into the town).

My original plan had been to go from Krabi town directly to the beach town of Ao Nang, and it turned out that we were actually very close to the road to Ao Nang. So after a bit more gesticulating to the scam artists in the tour office (which one of them returned by sticking her tongue out at me!), we just walked the 300meters up the road to the Ao Nang turn-off. As 'luck' would have it, a songthaw heading to Ao Nang just happened to be passing as we reached the road, and of course he stopped to let us hop up on the back. So it turned out we actually saved time and money by getting 'ripped off' (although the stress of arguing with the scammers wasn't too nice), and so 20 minutes later we arrived at the beach town of Ao Nang.

In fact, I saved even more money when I got back to Bangkok 10 days later when I confronted the guy who sold us our original bus tickets. I knew he knew it was all a scam, and I told him so in no uncertain terms. Of course he immediately got all defensive and started making up crappy excuses, none of which I entertained, and he very quickly handed me back 100 baht to cover the taxi fare into Krabi town that I never got - the sucker! I think my case was strengthened by 2 girls that just happened to be sitting behind me while I was arguing with him who also just happened to have been on the same bus 10 days earlier! I don't think they bothered to argue their case though, like most Epsilons they just casually accepted being ripped off for some reason.

Anyway, myself and Sarah got settled in Ao Nang while waiting for Mullins to arrive (Sarah had to run around quite a few places to find anything reasonable, but again we seemed to get lucky and she found a great spot).

It turned out that Mullins just happened to bump into a friend of his from Melbourne on the bus, and so we got to meet up, and spend the next few days, with Nick. We all got settled and headed out to explore.